The advent and rise of the Internet has permitted the wide spread use of electronic forms of communication across vast distances at high speeds. The speed of data transmission is of paramount importance for any network. Data speed is a function of network efficiency. Therefore, the more efficiently a network operates, the greater the data speed it can provide to its clients.
But data speed is not the only important metric within a wireless communication network. There is also the issue of security. Typically, in wireless networks, a security gateway is placed between a wireless network and the core network. The purpose of the security gateway is eponymous—it provides data security. This is typically done by creating a layer 3 VPN tunnel between the security gateway and the wireless network. In practice, there are frequently several VPN tunnels existing between a security gateway and a wireless network.
FIG. 1 shows a prior art rendering of this technique. FIG. 1 depicts a wireless mesh network, consisting of wireless nodes 110, 112, and 114, communicatively coupled to a security gateway 130. In this network, each wireless node 110, 112, 114 has an independent VPN connection 120, 122, 124, respectively, to the security gateway. The security gateway 130 provides the wireless mesh network with secure access to the core network 140.
Although using a VPN tunnel as a communication conduit for a wireless network is a relatively secure means of transmitting data, the technique has disadvantages, particularly in the context of interfacing with a mesh network. First, the security gateway cannot automatically route packets into the mesh network because the mesh routing tables are not automatically updated within the security gateway. This means, when link costs within a mesh network change, as they often do, the security gateway does not receive updated routing information that reflects these changes in routing costs. When this happens, the security gateway uses sub-optimal routing paths, which increases network overhead. Second, the creation of a secure tunnel for many, or all, of the wireless base stations within a wireless mesh results in multiple tunnels, sometimes referred to as a “tunnel within a tunnel” scenario, which is inefficient from an overhead perspective. Finally, meshed routing protocols can become increasingly complex because there are multiple routes to reach a given wireless base station from the security gateway. It is, therefore, desirable to find a way to mitigate these adverse effects.